SKA telescope to be built in two stages

The director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research says the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is still in its planning stage and construction is scheduled to begin in 2016.

It was announced last week that a remote site in the Murchison would jointly host the powerful telescope, along with sites in New Zealand and South Africa.

The $2.5 billion project is being touted as a major resource for scientists investigating the evolution of the universe.

Professor Peter Quinn says the project will be built in two stages.

"We'll start construction in 2016. That construction will go through to about 2019," he said.

"At that point we're ready to turn the first phase of the SKA on and start to operate it about 2020.

"We'll pause and make a decision about what phase two is going to look like and then we'll deploy that phase two and that will be operational, we hope, around 2024, 2025.

"Phase two of the project is the biggest, about 90 per cent of the receiving area and about 70 per cent of the money will be spent after 2020.

"So around 2020 when the first phase is on the ground, and when everything is seen to be working or not working, they will make a decision about what kind of technologies they are going to deploy in phase two."

It's a fundamental human yearning to be a part of something bigger than one's self, and maybe that's what drove my mate Ash to die, far from home, in a bloody foreign war against Islamic State, writes C August Elliott.